History of the GRAY and Other Families

Sir George Gray¹

(14 April 1812 - 19 September 1898)

Father

Mother

Sir George Gray was born on 14 April 1812 at Lisbon, Portugal, .¹ He was the son of Major George Gray and Elizabeth Anne Vignoles.¹ Sir George Gray married Eliza Lucy Spencer on 2 November 1839 at King George Sound, Western Australia, Australia, .¹ Sir George Gray died on 19 September 1898 at Kensington, Middlesex, England, , at age 86.¹

Eliza Lucy Spencer (c 1823 - 4 Sep 1898)

Sir George Gray KCB (14 April 1812 – 19 September 1898) was a British soldier, explorer, Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, Governor of Cape Colony (South Africa), the 11th Premier of New Zealand and a writer. By political philosophy a Gladstonian liberal and Georgist, Grey eschewed the class system for the prosaic life of Auckland's new governance he helped to establish.¹
He and Eliza Lucy Spencer had only one child, born in 1841 in South Australia, died aged 5 months.

Grey was Governor of Cape Colony from 5 December 1854 to 15 August 1861. He founded Grey College, Bloemfontein in 1855 and Grey High School in Port Elizabeth in 1856. in 1859 he laid the foundation stone of the New Somerset Hospital, Cape Town. When he left the Cape in 1861 he presented the National Library of South Africa with a remarkable personal collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and rare books.¹